Financial services giant targets the young market

CEBU, Philippines - Sun Life Financial Philippines is shifting its focus on penetrating the young market.

Rizalina G. Mantaring, the company's president and chief executive officer said that in order to penetrate this promising young generation market, Sun Life is boosting its digital presence, as well as increasing the number of young financial advisors.

Strong digital presence and capitalizing on technology is one of the keys to tap the millennial generations' propensity to spend their money wisely on life insurance and retirement products.

  "The younger generation today, those in their 20's and 30's are seeing the importance of financial literacy, even more than their parents do. They invest on mutual funds and insurances because they are easily influence by friends who are also doing the same. That's why we have financial advisors who are also of their own age group because these younger policy holders gravitate towards the same age group," said Mantaring in a press conference yesterday to kick off its 120th anniversary celebration.

Mantaring said that young policy holders and investors are the fastest growing segment for the insurance firm, accounting for about 20 percent.

 "We are increasing our digital and mobile services that will be tailored fit to the needs of the younger market. Initially, the younger policy holders would want to deal with financial advisers face-to-face in explaining the products but later on, they prefer to transact their payments online and be able to track their finances via their mobile phones," she added.

The younger market starts with investing in mutual funds and quickly move on to buying insurance products. Premiums can now be availed for as low as P5,000 (for mutual funds).

 Despite the presence of many insurance players in the country for many decades now, the insurance penetration in the Philippines has remained low.

In 2013, insurance penetration stood as low as 1.48 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) compared to countries like Malaysia and Thailand which is at three percent.

Meanwhile, Sun Life appointed Cebuano personality--industrial designed Kenneth Cobonpue  as brand ambassador.

In celebration of its 120th year, Sun Life Financial-Philippines is beefing up activities in Cebu this week for its policy holders and financial advisers.

In 2013, Sun Life ranked as the number one life insurance company in the Philippines in terms of total premiums totaling P29.7-billion. This is the third time the company topped the industry, the first tome being in 2011 when it ranked first with its total premiums of P13.9-billion, and in 2012 with P20.1-billion.

The Sun Life group in the Philippines made P41.7-billion in premium income.  (FREEMAN)